Spirit Guide
by XEmoMidnaX
Summary: Before death he had loved and lost. In death he had lost the will to love. Post TP alternate ending. Rated T for character death. MidLink.
1. Pain

**A/N: Well, I decided to start a new fic. I'm afraid though that my computer blew up, thus deleting the new chapters to some of my other fics. I'm restarting them though so don't worry. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Zelda. Nintendo does. **

Spirit Guide

Pain

If this truly was how dying felt then I despised it greatly. My head was burning, my brain too big for it to hold. The wind whistled like a raging storm through my ears and the rain pierced my skin like millions of tiny needles. I cried out for it to stop. I was sure no words came out, drowned out by my screams of agony. His maniac laughing. Her frantic calling. Disturbed whinnies. Yet the fourth sound I longed to hear never came. That doubled my pain, made me so overcome with the burning that I was begging inside my head to die. I welcomed death to rid me of the agony. Death ignored my desperate plea. I despised death.

They say when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. Hopefully seeing my childhood was a sign that the pain would soon end. My youth was full of pain too. I'd seen the bloody murder of the mayoress and her killer's death soon after. I'd experienced broken bones and the white-hot pain of my ankle snapping bore right through me. I was wet with sweat and blood at the time. My visions dimmed out the noise but the pain was still there. I seemed to feel the pain Uli endured in Colin's birth. How would he feel, losing his best friend? I never would meet his sister. Would the villagers tell her of me? Would Zelda even tell them HOW I died? Then I began to see my quest. The Bulbins attacking Ilia and Colin. The pain of my first transformation. Midna. My heart throbbed and the beating became slow and uneasy. I could feel Midna dying in my heart. I feared Ganon would kill my beloved mare and Princess Zelda too. The fate of Hyrule with Ganon at the reign was too horrible to bear. My visions faded. My screams were raspy and I felt blood spurt from my mouth. My last vision was Zelda's grief struck face as I slowly faded into the eternal abyss that was the end.

I expected the Sacred Realm, the place we 'went when we died', to be a myth. Yet the place I woke up in was almost certainly the heaven that people always mentioned in prayer. Where the goddesses lived. I felt no more pain. I could live without breathing, without my heart beating. It was true that I was dead. But I couldn't believe that this was the Sacred Realm. Surely it was legend. The evidence that backed up the existence of the myth was all there. I saw people I knew to be dead. Perhaps it was merely my brain acting up in limbo. I wasn't alive but I was enough for my brain to be functioning. Just not as usual. I wondered if the rest of my body was working, if I could stand and walk. I attempted this to see if my assumption was reality. It seemed to be, but I was still a little shaky. There was a dark, crimson stain on my front where Ganon had delivered the final blow. Other people I saw, young and old, of every tribe and race in the kingdom, even the world, also had evidence of their deaths imprinted upon their soulless bodies. This man had some form of cancer that wasn't treated in time. That young girl had broken her neck. It was clear the wasted figure of the elderly woman who was holding my bag, stained in my blood, had died peacefully of old age. She handed it to me and I took it with much gratitude. I wished her well as she got on with her business. I decided to get on with my own too. Then I saw unnatural deaths. Twisted faces of those who had been mauled by beasts. Men who had been decapitated by cruel beings, living solely to kill. It hurt me mentally, though physically my pain had ended for all of time. A young child was hunched up in the corner, his pale face stained with dirt, sweat and blood. He was clothed in rags and was no more than a bag of bones. He'd been beaten, abused, starved. I could tell he hated people. He hissed as I approached. He had been fair and sweet before he was tortured. I could tell. If the dead could cry, my face would be damp with tears. I looked away. I felt that if I looked at his small, inhuman figure I would become like him. Hating mankind.

My feet no longer ached when I walked vast distances. I had been searching endlessly for some form of civilisation. This place I couldn't call the 'Sacred Realm' seemed to be an exact replica of Hyrule, only the people there were dead. I knew that in Castle Town, the bar owner wouldn't be Telma. The Princess wouldn't be Zelda. Not yet. Ganon hadn't taken her life. Yet. I swore vengeance on that man. I would be his own personal poltergeist for all eternity. I kicked a rock in my rage, feeling no pain in my feet. My boots were scuffed and the right one was ripping at the seams. I was rather pleased at my new body, unable to feel pain. Over the horizon I could make out the ghostly silhouette of a castle. I made my way northwards, the figure becoming more detailed as I got nearer to my destination. My new 'life' would start here. Ordon would be too lonely when all my friends were still alive.

It was so lively in the market place. Far more so than it was when I was alive. No-one seemed to mind that the person who manned the fruit stall had his head under his arm, or that the woman who sold arrows had her skin hanging off in a ghastly fashion. Everyone respected the others and I heard no mention of the word 'death.' The Bazaar was laden with spirits, all of which seemed happy to see the new face. I recognised one man as the one who had sold sweets to the children in the village when I was seven. He sold sweets now. I greeted him but he didn't seem to know who I was. He wasn't even looking at me. There was a small huddle of people he was part of that was all looking at something on the ground. I knew it was best to mind my own business, but my curiosity got the better of me. I tried not to push anyone, but they couldn't feel pain either so if I did floor somebody they wouldn't mind. It was merely me being rude to them. There was a woman in the centre of the huddle, holding a small bundle in a white cloth. I thought it might have been some precious material, but then it moved. I assumed it was an animal and began to leave. As I turned, the thing spoke in a thin and raspy, but defiantly feminine voice. It seemed oddly familiar. I'd heard that voice before. And the voice seemed to be gasping my name…

"Link…."

**A/N: I hoped you like it. Please review. I'm sorry I couldn't review your amazing fanfics though guys. My computer wasn't letting me. I can start doing that again now. **


	2. Reunion

**A/N: I hope you liked that last chapter. Here is chapter two. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Legend of Zelda. It belongs to Nintendo.**

Reunion 

At first I barely recognised the tiny figure in the woman's arms. I felt it was out of sheer confusion, some sort of mistake that she thought she knew me. She began to struggle, trying to break free from the woman's tight grasp. I gasped, seeing how loosely she was being thrown around by her own strength. My brain began working again before I retaliated and grabbed her, making me remember the dead couldn't feel pain. I could only just make out her face, bruised and heavily scarred. She constantly called out my name, in a high pitched screech. A black hand extended from the cloth, reaching out towards me. It wasn't shrivelled and dead looking like it had been torched by the burning tongue that was fire. It was undamaged, save for what looked like a love bite on the end of her ring finger. I'd given Midna a love bite on the end of her ring finger… There was certainly something familiar about that hand and broken face. In life her fingers may have… glowed. She uttered my name again. I moved forward and extended my arm so that I could brush her singed, but still flamboyant orange hair from her face. A thin trickle of sticky blood expanded out and broke as I pulled it from her swollen eye. It made my heart sink as I looked into her good ruby red eye. She smiled a toothy grin. And I noticed, much to my horror that at least three were missing. One of which I knew had been a sweet little fang, jutting out of the left side of her mouth. I looked at her twisted face that once held great beauty and could only utter one word back as our fingers entwined as one and our gazes met.

"Midna…"

It was fate that Midna and I would die together. But to die so early, in such a gruesome fashion was past the two of us when we planned ahead into our futures. Yet we sat together in a sweet, honey scented inn where Telma's bar had been, both of us beyond the barrier between life and death. I felt sorry for Midna, and a little angry that she was permanently… gory. She had one huge pink scar around her entire body, from the top of her left shoulder to the bottom of her right hip. Her hair had clearly been set alight and her face thoroughly beaten. I hated Ganon even more. My posture was rigid and clenched up, trying to ventilate my rage. Midna placed her hand on my balled up fist to calm me down. There was so much I wanted to talk with her about, but it all involved Ganon. I feared that my physical strength had been boosted in my immortality and I'd break something. Even my Midna's non-beating heart. Instead of talking, I merely stared at her scar that wound around her body like a pink snake. She sighed.

"You don't want to know how that happened…" she mumbled. I looked into her one good eye longingly and nodded. I was too overcome with hatred to talk.

"It hurt a lot," she affirmed. That seemed quite obvious. "It killed me soon after though… You're lucky you only got stabbed right through… he cleaved me in half."

The news made me want to shatter a glass in my anger, but I held myself back telling myself that I would have to get used to my new fiery temper if I was to continue living in peace. It took me a while to muster up the words I needed to say. I spat them out in a low snarl.

"That fiend… cut you… in half?"

"Well, not technically in half, but yes he did cut me right through so I was in two pieces… Then I died…" her voice trailed off and she hung her head. Her hair hung over her face at uneven lengths. Some parts were shorter than mine and some were at maximum length. It looked like an animal had cut it. It seemed to give Midna a more dangerous complexion. The thought of Midna in two pieces was too awful to bear. I pictured her lying there in a pool her of own sickly blood, her insides spilling out over the floor. Visions of her twitching as the last of her life left the world and then become still, pale and rigid formed in my mind. The thought was sick and I wished I'd never conjured it up.

"Then… How come you're not in two pieces now… I saw a man with no head… Surely you would b…" she placed a finger on my lips to hush me and whispered 'shuuuuush'. I obliged, momentarily distracted by the beauty of her eye, the last lease of life within her.

"I'll explain it as best I can for you Link," she affirmed, replacing her finger with her lips. The kiss felt cold and… unnatural, like kissing a dead person. It took a while for me to remember that I _was_ kissing a dead person. It was another thing I'd have to get used to, along with so much more. As much as I was dying for a kiss and cuddle, I still wished to know more about the tale Midna was about to weave before me. I let my lips lightly brush against her blackened eye and nodded, signalling that she could tell me the story. "As you know, we are dead,"

"Yes, of course Midna,"

"And when the process of dying starts, however early it may be, we go to limbo where you are tested to see just what kind of person you were. If you did many sins, like kill thousands and other ghastly things, all too horrific to talk about, you went straight to the underworld. There you can feel pain. With every movement you make, a wave of agony terrorises your body. Many go insane. The worst thing that could ever happen to you is to go there…" Midna shuddered. I nodded in agreement, glad that I had been a good man throughout my short life. I let Midna go on with her story, "but if you did a few, you go to purgatory. There the goddesses will send you on to the Sacred Realm. If you were a good person, and by good I mean never broke the law, the goddesses will fix up any wounds and send you on. If you did break the law, but not in such a drastic way that you go to the Underworld, you have to be twisted and ugly forever… You're a good man. It's only the stain and a faint scar left of your wound… As for me… I was good enough to have my body sewn back together," she gestured towards her scar, "but not so angelic and well behaved that my face and hair were fixed…" Midna looked away, as if she was disgusted by herself, but I thought differently. I turned her head so I could look into her eye again. She pouted.

"Stop looking away," I warned her, tapping her lightly on the nose.

"I'm too hideous to be looked at. You must look away."

I frowned at her. In my opinion, she looked a little battered and twisted, but never ugly. She was my angel, my princess. I didn't really care that she'd had her face mauled by a monster. Inside, she was the same old Midna to me. She pushed me away with a few charred strands of hair that was once her weapon hidden within the luscious sheen of her fiery mane.

"Don't."

"You don't deserve a girl as ugly as me. Go kill Ilia or Zelda. They deserve you more than I ever will," she turned in her chair so her back was facing me. I dragged a finger down her back, fingering a long strand of hair. Her back muscles went tense and she quivered, causing a grin to form on my face. I brushed my lips in the space between her shoulder blades and rested my hands on her hips. She tried to shake me away. I simply hooked my arms around her and rested my hands on her plump, rounded tummy. Luckily she didn't shake me off, but she still sat, rigid and not likely to show any form of affection towards me. I leaned in, determined to make her realise she was wrong, and whispered in her ear (which I hadn't noticed was only half an ear on her left side) "I love you more than my death itself."

"How can you LOVE death?" she scorned, "it's a horrible thing, for the person who's life was shattered and the ones who loved and cherished them. You must be some pretty depressed kid to love death. Besides, the phrase is 'I love you more than life itself'. _Sweetheart_,"she spat that last word.

"I can't really say 'life' when I'm dead. You're always hard to please. Everything has to be perfect for you, my dear Princess. That's what I love about you," I turned her head gently with my index and ring finger and shifted us both around until we were face to face. I brushed Midna's black fringe from her face and gazed into her eye. She was scowling, but even that was turning upwards into her sexy little grin, minus the cute fang factor. I pulled her into me and rested her head on my chest. Her tiny fingers gripped at my blood-soaked tunic, pulling it taught against my back. I whipped my gloves off and ran my lukewarm hands down her deathly cold back. I could feel her blood boil, though after what happened, I was surprised there was any left, and watched her cheeks go from peach to pink to red. Both of us leaned into each other and sent an onslaught of kisses in the other's direction. Midna began to nibble my ears, although, much to my disappointment, I could hardly feel it. I buried my nose into the tender skin on her shoulder, resting my face in between the curl to the edge of her black pattern decorating her pale blue skin and her tiny neck. I let my tongue poke out and licked the small space softly. Midna shivered. I let a quiet but hearty chuckle rumble in my throat and whispered into the skin

"I love you more than life, death and everything I ever cherished. You are my twilit angel. And you're mine,"

**A/N: Thanks for the reviews last time. In the next chapter, we see some old faces. Keep reading.**


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